The Valley of Neverland
by Coginom
Summary: ... there's Neverland. And if you ask people what the metaphor is, you will get different answers. And these are some thoughts of mine ... Please R
1. Chapter 1

**The Valley of Neverland**

Life – _It's a play, the play. Of course, we will have to make do with a few compromises. Much of it will have to be imagined. As it should be._

_Time is chasing after all of us, isn't that right? -_ That crocodile, that darn ticking crocodile is chasing after us, always hidden behind the shadows, the infinite interim between present and future.

_How did the clock get into the crocodile? It swallowed it. -_ In fact the crocodile embodies our lives or merely the hectic, callous and single-minded reminders of what our lives should be. We are blind to see what dull reflections our lives have become. We are blind to see the crocodile, dazzled by it, so that we turn round and walk away and never look back. We leave the crocodile behind and thus we leave it to grow and swell in the shadow of our selves. We are oblivious, even then, still, when it swallows time, when it swallows the clock. And gradually we forget that there has ever been a clock, we forget about its value, we deny what it stands for – even though it will always be there, inside the crocodile, and it will never once stop ticking, until it catches up with us and we die.

It wouldn't be that bad for we know that one day is our last day, but it's the moment before that, the moment before our body dies and we close our eyes forever – it's the moment our inner child dies and the moment we stop making up pretences.

_To die would be an awfully big adventure. – _Peter Pan is the everlasting spirit of youth, a reflection of past and present. A spirit that reflects the present for all those innocent children who dream up and live all those fantasies and games we consider trivial. However, who are we to judge the purest beings on earth? Who are we to judge a kind of wisdom we have long left behind us in the shadows of our past – our past, the past of grown-ups?

We are held back by our own inadequacy, our ever so important social status and our reputation hence we forget how it was to be a child. We forget what we felt when we pretended to be somewhere else, somewhere we wanted to be. We forget how it was to dream, to wish, to hope and how it was to accomplish those dreams and wishes instantly, whenever we desired, just because we could, just because we imagined them to be true. We forget how it was when we didn't crave to fulfil perfection, but built our own perfect fulfilment – no matter how impossible it seemed. Imagination is a child's unwavering gift – imagination is the epitome of innocence and purity we lose as a result of tragedy, injustice and struggles.

_It seems to me that Peter's trying to grow up too fast. – _How is it that there are so many children in this world who want nothing more than to grow up? What is it they see in the responsibilities, the pointless struggles and the endless worries?

What they see is the wall around every grown-up, the wall of pretence. A child pretends to create something new, something amazing, something only they can see. Maybe it's naïve, maybe it's not real and maybe it will never be true, but still they can make a simple moment an adventurous memory for a life time. And grown-ups? Grown-ups pretend in order to protect their children, in order to keep them the innocent beings they should be. Grown-ups pretend to know, pretend to be composed, pretend to shut out bittersweet reality – what children see as perfection is just another fantasy. What the world could really use are more adults who want to be children again in one way or another.

And if they just kept enough innocence and purity within them to imagine, then it would be enough for them to see what only the eyes of a child are able to make out. They could look at the world with just as much insignificance to make their own lives significant again – their true and earnest selves. Maybe then we all could be who we are and not who we want others to see.

_Young boys should never be sent to bed; they always wake up one day older. –_ Every day is momentous and it's simply another ability with which children are way ahead of their grown-up surroundings. It's the ability to live the day, the present and not the looming future. One day will be the day they have to stop pretending anyway and that day the crocodile will have caught up with them for the first time and they will enter another reality without the will and the power to draw up an imaginary reality. It's the same day another fairy dies and the world hopes for the first laugh of a baby. However, just think how many children are forced to grow up faster than they should and just how few babies get to laugh loud enough for the world to hear.

_I'm not Peter Pan; he is. -_ It is the hardest thing for a writer to make grown-ups see what children can see, to make grown-ups accept what they have once seen, to make grown-ups dig deep within themselves to find the remainders of abruptly hidden innocence. J.M. Barrie was the actual Peter Pan. He was one of the few fortunate ones, the ones strong and aware enough to keep that glimmer of innocence in his heart. He was the one, who imagined Neverland and he was the one who let himself be dragged into the real imaginary world, just to find the inspiration and power to write something that makes grown-ups become children again.

All this is based on a great movie that is mocked only by those who don't see the sparkle of brilliant fiction behind it – only the mistakes, the anachronisms, the divergences from reality. I will, however, stand by my opinion that life and love would be easier to live and maintain, if we would think like children again, just once in a while – lifting the heaviness of our masks and floating with the ease of a carefree child. Of course, I know we have to grow, have to bloom and have to grow up once, one day – that's the course of life.

_That is Neverland. - _What I ask for, though, is simple: I ask for the abyss separating childhood and adulthood to become a green and awe-inspiring valley ornamented with flowers, trees, endless streaming waters, creations and creatures we have never seen before and will never see again anywhere but there. I ask for that major impact forcing us to leave our childhood to be a worthy memory in the middle of that valley, a reminiscence of what once was and what is and has to be now. I ask for it to be a crossing point we won't be ashamed to use, won't be scared to use. I ask for Neverland to be that crossing between past and present, where we find all our memories of a lost youth we can revisit and where we find loved ones we have lost on our quest to reach Neverland ourselves. I ask for Neverland to be the bridge that connects our reality with the imaginary reality – connecting our grown-up selves with our inner child.

_It's just a bit of silliness, really. -_ I saw the movie "Finding Neverland" and was deeply touched by its importance to me, the inspiration. In fact it stopped a severe case of writer's block and filled me up with ideas and that incredible urge to write in letters what my soul pours out in an endless stream – the one I like to imagine as a part of Neverland. My obsession over the movie and its meaning ends with this, ends with letters of my soul, while my fascination carries on.


	2. Chapter 2

**Ad finerem**

I know that fiction and reality are different phrases, different worlds – antonyms. All I want as a writer is to merge them every so often – the same way I ask for present and past to merge in order to grant a human being life to its fullest. The movie, my opinion and thoughts about Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie and the Llewelyn-Davies family are fiction to a remarkable degree. The reality was something else – something astonishingly diverse.

In reality J.M. Barrie was no unwavering optimist, no boy who grew up to be a bigger boy, but a severely conflicted man. He was unbelievingly scarred and burdened by the loss of his elder brother David. In order to grieve he invented his Neverland – where he could see his brother. His admiration and devotion to David became somewhat neurotic. He willed time to stand still, he willed the clock to stop ticking, he willed the crocodile to stop chasing after him. In fact he coped with his own fate and life through his plays, more so in Peter Pan.

Somewhere deep within he was the boy who lost his brother and the childish innocence of the Llewelyn-Davies brothers, their games and fantasies were inspiration to unite the bitterness over his past and the joy and adoration of his present. Result was - _is_ a play that is extremely hard to read and understand even today, though it would be unjust to the unfathomable width of it to pick unconventional and controversial passages just to underline that opinion. Peter Pan is by far not part of the typical children's literature, but yet again it was a play to show innocence, a play to portray fantasy and fiction – children are able to do that by themselves, grown-ups need to be shown once again.

The real tragedy, however, is that with portraying their lives and their innocence, their adventures and child-like creations he robbed those five boys of their innocence. J.M. Barrie was talented in an astounding way to expose other people's innermost feelings, fears and wishes and it is the sheer irony of his life and the lives of those he accompanied that triggers this fascination we feel for the play.

He caught innocence and youth for us strangers, showed us distinctively what we lost times and times ago and yet he ruined it for those he loved the most. At least two of "his" boys committed suicide. He captured Neverland for us, for those who will themselves to become innocent and pure once more to experience the wonders of Neverland – he brought it to us.

Undoubtedly, Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies was his muse, the grown-up with a heart of gold, the dedicated mother he sought so desperately after his own gave up on him. Undoubtedly, her boys and Barrie himself were devastated after her death. And at least after yet another blow to their innocence they weren't able to flee into Neverland any more for they lost all child within along with the public display of their past and the loss of their mother and dear companion. In the end most of them died unhappy and full of remorse, unable to enter their Neverland for it was now a public place for all of us. It's the irony that displays ever so often in our lives, in our world – the joy and relieve of the masses is built upon the misery of a few.

Ad finerem:_ Just Believe._ - Whenever we let ourselves be child enough, innocent enough we can visit what we have left behind, what we have lost, as long as we keep imagining the existence of Neverland. And following that fact there may be people who will find J.M. Barrie and the little Llewelyn-Davies boys playing with Porthos in Kensington Gardens, while Arthur watches with fatherly pride and Sylvia with motherly affection from their position on the grass not far from them – where they will always be a memory of their own blissful past, forever in Neverland.


End file.
